Some of the ECU tunes can do wonders, I just experienced it and I thought its worth sharing.
I picked up a 2009 Audi A3, 2L Turbo few months ago and I was aiming to tune it a little bit to give few extra ponies under the hood. There were many ECU tunes available in the market for this engine. APR, Unitronics, GIAC and Remo are some of them. After doing the research online, I decided to go with Unitronics stage-2 tune.
http://www.unitronic-chipped.com/
Stage-1 could have been done without any hardware modifications to the car, however, less power compared to stage 2.
Stock:
200Bhp, 280Nm Torque. 0-100 in 7 seconds.
Preparations for stage-2:
Added a Turboback Exhaust ( this is a must as the stage 2 significantly increased the boost) - Cost $1500
Iridium Spark Plugs - $200 Including labor
New Ignition coils - $220 including labor
K&N drop in air filter - $45 ( A lot of people go for a cold air intake, I talked to the tuners personnally and learned, the cold air intake actually make little difference, also I didn't want to ruin the engine cover, so I just replaced the stock filters with drop in K&N filters).
Finally - the Tune (or software upgrade - thats actually the right term).
Stats after upgrade:
280 Bhp
440Nm @1800 rpm
0-100 - to be tested - expecting low 5 seconds
Driving experience - I can tell the long story short - Took the car out for a test drive, drove up north of Phoenix and ended up driving 365 Miles yesterday (580 Kms). The car has so much power that I have to constantly watch the speedo for not over speeding, it feels like the 0-100km is achieved in no time, what a difference from the stock motor. If you switch off the ESP then its a festival of wheel spins, almost in any gear the wheels spins if you floor the pedal. The sweet sound of turbo back exhaust and turbo spooling is music to ears. The tune is just not about power, it also improved the overall power delivery to the wheels, after the tune, the turbo lag is completely gone, the wheels are not instant but gradual which you can control and enjoy doing it. Before the tune, the car was more of a wild animal without a master, you floor the pedal there was sudden flow of power to the wheels which almost felt like uncontrolled and wasted, anyways, all of that is is history with the tune.
Here is a video of the exhaust ( at the time of this video there was no tune done, it was just the turbo back exhaust). I will make a new video and upload it later. The unitronic tune has added a nice 'fart' while shifting the gears - which is absent in this video.
Some photos: